


Every Moment Of Existence

by odinstark



Category: Detroit Evolution (2020)
Genre: #DEArtFest, Ada and Zen Gavin would be bros, Ada has to deal with Emotions, Angst, Bodyswap, Character Death, Deviancy (Detroit: Become Human), I mess with both DBH and DE canon, In another universe I think, M/M, Zen Gavin is technically his own being, and im Incapable of extending dialogue, because I wrote this in like 30 minutes, she has a very 180 arc, this is really sad i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25636174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odinstark/pseuds/odinstark
Summary: When Ada attempts to probe Nines' operating software, it does not go according to plan... At all.For DEArtFest bodyswap and alternative ending days, I'm late again but when am I not.Also don't hate me for what I'm about to do.
Relationships: Ada (Detroit: Evolution) & Upgraded Connor | RK900, Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed, Zen Gavin (Detroit Evolution) & Ada (Detroit Evolution)
Kudos: 13





	Every Moment Of Existence

**Author's Note:**

> okay basically just so yall understand Zen Gavin in this, he's kind of more like Amanda with Connor, except yk... The Whole Amanda part of that. Michelle has mentioned in a stream that Zen Gavin was kind of just a manifestation that Nines had created, of his own subconscious. That he sort of just existed because Nines had wanted him too, he didn't have a consciousness of his own (see him not caring about getting deleted because he had no self preservation). In this, he originally started as that but soon attacked himself to the dormant code in the Zen Garden that a variation of Amanda was to make use of (but never did since the RK900 line was left unfinished) so he has a lot more free will and his own independent thoughts that he does canonically. That comes into play in this fic.

She awoke in a garden she'd never been before...Well awoke was not quite the right word. She was an android, she didn't need to sleep to live, she couldn't sleep at all, because she wasn't alive, not like a human. 

But her eyes opened and took in the sights around her. Lush green fuzzy leaves, flashy pink flowers, gravel under her feet that sounded like audio static. Ada could hear unseen birds twitter above her head but the longer she listened, the more she realised their calls played in reverse. 

She had never seen this place before, never mind actually _be_ here. Her memory storage had never failed her before. But her scans were bringing up Nothing, she could find nothing, not a single location, in her extensive database that matched this at all.

She tried to use environmental features next, after taking a few steps towards the flower beds. The flowers came up named in their proper Latin but the chemical make up that usually accompanied natural matter did not. She tried to gauge the garden's temperature next but her program came up inconclusive. Same with the air tests. Not only was there no pollution, which could indicate the general region she was in, but there was no...anything.

Like the vacuum of space there was no air. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a bridge in the brightest hue of red she had ever seen before, even brighter than the walls that guided her every step, making them seem pale in comparison. In the middle of a bridge, what she had initially confused for a tangle of low hanging vines was actually a tall, slender... Grey glitch. She turned and walked towards the bridge in precise footsteps, stopping at the first degree of curve. 

It was soft and fuzzy at the edges, but the shades of black and white were sharp in the centre. It was a familiar shape, something Ada knew she recognised but she had never had to analyse something so abstract, not even one of Markus' paintings when she had to keep up appeances at Jericho.

Jericho. That was right. 

It came back to her in a rush of smoke and the crackle of electricity. 

Her memory probe. Her hand around Nines neck. The echo as a chassis hit the floor, collapsing under the weight. And then her eyes closed.

Ada looked down, expecting to see thirium, or blood, possibly, as she recalled hearing footsteps follow her and Nines as she lured him away. It did not take a genius to deduce who might be following the two androids.

But there was no blood. There was no... Anything, her hands looked the same, not even a speck of dirt. Her clothes, however, were different. Black dress trousers, polished charcoal laced flats and a buttonless obsidian black shirt, open from her neck to her collar.

"Nines?"

Ada had almost thought she had spoken aloud, and her voice box had glitched in tone until she processed the voice that had spoken. 

She turned sharply at the foot of the bridge and faced a familiar man. Gavin Reed. Ada's hand clenched and she was halfway through a step to finally take care of the man who was making her plan so difficult, before she froze, her foot hovering an inch off the ground, as her optical sensors caught up to her processor.

The man in front of her was certainly what looked like to be Gavin Reed, but her sensors were glitching again like they had with the flower, there was no physical data, no heart rate, anything. It was like the man was a husk of what she had scanned before, like he had been gutted of anything that made him chemically human.

"You're not Nines," the man before her scowled and it deepened when Ada let out a mirthless laugh.

"No, no I'm not," she took another step forward towards the man in white, her shoes crunching against the gravel path,

"But you're not Gavin Reed either. Not really."

The two stared off for a moment as the backwards birds continued to chirp in the background. A light breeze rustled the trees and Ada hadn't ever known the wind could sound different in reverse. 

"You did that. You being here. You fucked up this place, you fucked up his head," Gavin growled with an anger Ada hadn't ever seen from the real one, but his copycat was certainly doing a good job in replicating the scowl.

"Here is...where exactly? How did a whiny, pathetic human manage to kidnap me when I managed to overpower the most advanced android CyberLife ever created?" 

"I don't think you really fucking understand this. You're in his head. You are in his body. I didn't overpower you and drag you here. I didn't need to. You, when you jumped him, when you stole his software...Nines fought back against you. And now you're here, in his body. And he's not. Except for that."

The man gestured to the glitch on the bridge and now that Ada looked a second time, she began to understand why it was so familiar. It was an interlocking pattern of greys, blacks and white making the outline of Nines. Like a stagnant shadow. An immovable echo. 

Ada felt her biocomponents freeze up in her chest cavity. No. No. That couldn't be true. That would mean that...

"You transferred yourself over when you tried to force an interface. You corrupted the Garden. Nines... Nines' body is on a bed in CyberLife right now, and they're going to access his memory banks and see everything. They're going to see you."

Ada didn't know why that thought filled her with... She didn't even know. What was this...Feeling? She had never felt it before, not anything for that matter. Except for satisfaction after acquiring a new piece for her body. 

"Are you going to say something, anything, a big gloating villain monologue about how you killed your enemy, how you now have access to the most advanced software and body in the world? Nothing? You're going to stare off into space after you destroy everything I've ever known?" the man bit, his voice raw. Ada continued to look at the glitchy mass for a moment. 

"I didn't kill him."

"You didn't... That's a fucking joke, you-" 

" _I_ _didn't kill him._ "

Ada turned around and for the first time since she opened her eyes, not only in the Garden, but since her activation all those years ago, she didn't see the red walls that restricted her yet guided her existence. The water that gushed blue under the bridge, the swirling noises of the lazy river reminded her too clearly of the look and feel of thirium running down her finger tips, pooling in the crevices of her nail beds and the fake palm lines of her hands. The call of the birds felt like pitch shifted screams of each and every android she had taken apart. 

Ada had never had a second thought about those androids she had deactivated. She never gave a second thought to their existence after they ended, but now all of them were hitting her like a train, all at once. All those lives... 

All those lives?

"I didn't kill him. If I did, I would Know, I would remember. I would hear it, I would smell it, I-I would see it. I would see it right now, I would see his blood on my hands. I would..." Ada's HUD warned her of raising internal temperatures and without a second thought, her mouth split open and she took in a deep, shuddering breath. 

"Hey, hey, hey," the man took a step or two forward, his anger now washed away as he took in the sight of android convulsing in place in front of him. 

"No please, please don't. I've never, I've never felt like this before. I've never felt anything before, I don't know what's happening to me, my software is glitching and I don't... I don't know what to do," Ada gasped, and felt moisture run down her face. For a second she had thought it was boiling hot thirium like she was seeing in her memories, but her second glance confirmed it was something else. 

Tears. She was crying. 

She had never done that before either. 

What had happened to her? The walls were gone, she was feeling things, she was crying for fuckssake, what was happening? 

Was her body rejecting Nines' software? Was it shutting down? Could her chassis not support the demands of his code? Was she dying? She didn't want to die, she didn't want to... 

She wanted to live. 

"Give me your hand," Gavin's voice broke through the mist of confusion swirling in her CPU. 

Her head snapped up from where she had previously been staring at the floor. 

"What?" she asked through the tears, and dearly wished for the poncho she had been wearing, as to hide her twitching hands from sight. What was he doing? Didn't he hate her only moments ago?

"Give me your hand...Let me believe you, because I want to believe you."

Ada looked at her hand, clean, unstained of thirium and lifted it shakily into the air, as the skin bled back, revealing the white body underneath. If her scans hadn't indicated it earlier and his presence in Nines' mind palace, what he did next would have certainty tipper her off of his non human state.

Gavin's hand did not retract as her's did, but that didn't stop the interface prompt appearing on her HUD. As soon as she let him in, she felt him everywhere in her mind. Everyday in CyberLife, everynight in the scrapyard. Every twilight in dark alleys and alcoves. Mornings at Jericho, afternoons in meetings and evenings working away in her storage room. Every second she had been alive, he had set on a foot one. Every moment she existed, he had seen.

And then it stopped. And the hand left her's and rested on her shoulder.

"Ada, listen to me. You are on the very cusp of deviancy. The reason you are reacting so badly is because there's one last wall to break okay? You break that, you'll be able to breath, you understand, yeah?"

She looked the man in the eyes and in that moment, she had understood why Nines had talked so fondly of Gavin, even if this wasn't truly him. Even if men weren't her thing, at all, she could appreciate what Nines saw. 

"The last wall?" was the only thing she managed to say before the next screech of birds pierced her audio processors.

"You know what it is. You brought it here."

Ada turned again at that, brushing off the hand on her shoulder. The glitch on the bridge stared her dead in the eye and in the mess of static, she saw the glimmer of red. She took a step, then another and another until she was a hair away from the crackling mass. Her hand only hesitated for a moment before she pressed her hand against the smooth surface. It took only the smallest amount of pressure before it shattered under her hand like a mirror.

As the shards hit the ground and disintegrated, Ada returned to herself. Her thirium pump's erratic beat steadied and her hands no longer shook.

"Ada? Are you... Awake?" Gavin called, and the woman could only nod before she turned swiftly and rushed off the bridge and hurried away, looking and searching as the second realisation of her time being here filled her newly deviated mind.

"Hey, fuck! Slow down, where are you going? I'm not going to hurt you, I believe you okay?" Gavin hurried behind her down the gravel path as she stared at every tree and every hedge, searching and searching.

"How do I get out?" she stopped and turned on the spot, stopping him in his tracks immediately. 

"What? Out?"

"Out of here? How? I need to get out, I need to stop him. "

"What? Stop who? Slow down, explain this to me."

Ada kicked at the gravel and the spray of rocks flickered out of existence as they hit the garden wall.

"If I'm here, Nines might be in my body. And I was... I was going to transfer myself into a new body tonight. I don't know but he might... He'll be following my objectives, since he has my code, I never got time to activate his in my body and...he might be a machine again. He could hurt people, he could hurt his people and he won't be able to stop himself."

"The Garden is fucked since you got here...I don't know if you can get out without fixing it, because Nines body is out there comatose right now, and the bastards at CyberLife don't know you're in here."

"I have to try, you said it yourself, they'll have scanned Nines memory, they'll have seen me attack him and they'll go after him instead of me. If he doesn't kill them, they'll kill him because of me. I...I can't let that happen."

Gavin stated at her at her for a second, in a way she couldn't understand. 

"Okay. Okay. We fix this garden, you get out, and you fucking save him, okay? You save him for me."

"I will...I'll try my best."

Turns out fixing code was a lot easier from the inside than it was outside. Within an hour, if time even passed in the Garden, the two had it fixed, and Ada wasted no time in waking up. As she opened her eyes for the first time as Nines, she took in the glowing purple room she found herself in. She didn't have much time to ground herself before a woman rushed in, looking shocked but happy. 

"Oh my god, Nines!" she exclaimed but her smile fell when she noticed the neutral expression,

"Wh-..Are you okay? Nines?"

"Officer Tina Chen," Ada spoke and it was extremely unsettling to hear her words in Nines voice and even more so to see the horror on the other woman's face,

"I don't have much time to explain. When I attacked Nines, my consciousness transferred over into his body. Nines may currently be in mine and not fully be in control of his actions. Both he and any of your friends that may be out looking for my body are in danger unless I get to him first. Please believe me, I'm telling you the truth. I just... I just deviated, an hour ago. Please. I want to right my wrongs."

The woman's face was blank for a moment as she dissected everything that was just said but it only took a second more for her decide after Ada sent her a pleading look.

"Okay, shit. Okay, let's...let's go to the Department, need to get you some clothes first though."

"Yes to clothes," Ada swung her legs off the bed and swayed a second, getting used to the unusual height, "No to the Department, I know where he'll be."

The drive could not be short enough, not even when Tina used the sirens to part the traffic. They pulled up at the warehouse, where a car was already parked out front, police issued. 

"Fuck," the officer said as she recognised the vehicle as she climbed out of her own.

A gunshot exploded inside in the building, and Ada struggled out of the seatbelt and into the open air.

" _Fuck,_ " she echoed and rushed inside as the woman called after her to slow down, and pulling out her gun when didn't listen to back her up.

Ada rushed into the warehouse and saw a figure slumped on the floor with a figure looming above.

"No!" she cried and rushed forwards, dropping to the floor to cradle the body after pushing the figure away.

"Nines?" the figure spoke in disbelief, and Ada looked up through her tears.

"You killed him.." she hissed, looking away from Gavin, and staring at the bloom of blue that spread across the android's white shirt.

"What?"

"You couldn't have waited...five fucking minutes for me to get here. I could have fucking SAVED HIM. He was in there and he couldn't get out, he was probably so scared and afraid of having to follow orders he didn't want to... I could have saved him!" Ada yelled in hysteria, leaning her forehead against the other, clenching her eyes shut but the tears still spilled onto both of their skin.

"What do you mean? That's Ada..that's.." Gavin's voice cut off when Ada looked at him again because whatever he saw in the eyes that looked back at him, was something he had never seen before in that face,

"....No."

"Gavin-" Tina approached calmly and set her hand gently on his shoulder, trying to contain her own emotion.

"No!" Gavin wrenched himself away from her,

"No! No, that's not... That's Ada. That's Ada, that's not..."

"Gavin..." Tina tried again and this time, the man let himself collapse against her.

"No no no no..."

Ada looked away from the two and back to her own body laying on the floor, thirium smudges against her cheeks. She pushed back the hair from her face, leaving blue streaks in the blonde. 

"I'm sorry Nines," she sobbed, dropping her face onto her body's chest,

"I'm so sorry."


End file.
